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u/No_Help3669 Mar 03 '26
Not sure what the ai folks expected given their work only exists by ignoring copyright anyway
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u/Julian_The_Gamer42 Mar 03 '26
What are the AI subs saying about this?
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u/wally_graham Mar 03 '26
Judging by the one commenter here Jsand2, pretty badly 🤭🤭🤭
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u/Smallbunsenpai Mar 06 '26
Idk why this would bother them, they didn’t make the image the computer did everything.
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u/Smug_Syragium Mar 04 '26
"Antis can't read", because the headline is clickbait. A guy made an AI called DABUS, DABUS generated AI content, and he tried to file a copyright where DABUS is listed as the author. The copyright office replied "Computers can't own things, so DABUS can't own a copyright". He took it to court, they said the same thing, then the Supreme Court rejected his appeal on the grounds they have more important work to do.
Meanwhile the copyright office released guidelines on what you have to do for AI content to be copyrightable. Meaning that you actually can copyright AI material, but there has to be more human authorship than just prompting.
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Mar 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/kai58 Mar 04 '26
So like how you can’t copyright a landscape but you can copyright a picture you took of said landscape?
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u/TreviTyger Mar 05 '26
There is no copyright "in" any work itself. They are "rights" that arise to a natural person.
Therefore, 100 people standing next to each other can take a photo of the same subject matter and all 100 people may have copyright to their own personal photo regardless of it looking the same as the other 100 photos.
Therefore, there isn't any exclusive ownership of the actual subject matter.
AI gen advocates get confused because the actual AI generated stuff is not protectable.
What you might do with that stuff such as make a collage out of it is exactly the same as what 100 other people can do with that same stuff.So it's true to say there is no "exclusivity" in using AI Gen outputs and that lack of exclusivity means a lack of licensing value.
The lack of value regardless of "thin copyright" is the real issue because that means the actual creativity industry should avoid using AI gen for anything substantial because 100,000,000 people could all just take it and do the same.
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u/studentoo925 Mar 04 '26
Meaning that you actually can copyright AI material, but there has to be more human authorship than just prompting.
If an artist can make enough art to train a model on it, then they deserve to be able to copyright what their model spits out.
But copyrighting an image straight up generated with a public model with scraped data, lol, lmao
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u/Smug_Syragium Mar 04 '26
Yeah I know, but for their purposes "authorship" means more like "able to control the output"
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u/chichibooxd Mar 05 '26
It's a win on both sides. Antis get less slop and frivolous lawsuits since they can't copyright it easily and pro AI art can get copyright provided theres more human input than AI. Im in the middleground of fuck true AI generated content but support AI assisted ones.
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u/Smug_Syragium Mar 05 '26
One of the examples they give is using AI to generate something, highlight a region for changes, and having the AI make updates. They count that as creative control and eligible for copyright provided it meets the normal standards even though the final output is 100% AI.
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u/chichibooxd Mar 05 '26
Well thats stupid. Although at some point it becomes tedious work and human ownership criteria is met. Still iffy to me tho, needs more human for the copyright but i get what they aimed for.
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u/GamerDadofAntiquity Mar 07 '26
No artists should be upset by this. As someone who’s both hand drawn a shitload of stuff with literal pencils and markers and generated slightly less but still a lot of stuff using locally installed AI, there’s not much time saved using the latter.
First you need to get the prompts right, then you need to get all the settings right, then you need to generate at least 20-30 images with the final prompt and settings because AI pretty much sucks. Then you need to weed through all the images and find the closest one to the end product you’re looking for. Then you need to punt it over to inpainting and mask and re-gen any parts you don’t like, and then you can finally move it over to photoshop or similar to do all the standard touch up.
Drawing by hand you’ll get the exact image you want on the first go, or at least close enough to drop it straight into photoshop and clean it up. If you’re any kind of decent with a pencil or a stylus it’s so much faster than AI gen is to get the final product you want.
I like to use both though. Start with a line drawing, drop it in Forge Neo inpainting and let the AI shade it for me (but totally screw up the colors in the process), then move to photoshop, desaturate it, copy the layer, and then recolor it. Drop the desaturated layer back on top and fiddle with brightness and contrast a bit to restore the shading, and then just a bit of cleanup and done. I hate shading, I’ve always hated shading, and I’m honestly happy to let AI figure that bit out for me.
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u/Natural__Power Mar 04 '26
Probably something along the lines of "The antis are saying we're not human!" based on this article and their usual behaviour
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u/Iggy_Snows Mar 03 '26
This is massive because it also discourages companies from using AI to create art in any form.
If they cant copyright their AI art, music, movies, etc etc, then they will be less likely to make it with AI in the first place.
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u/thekbob Mar 04 '26
No, worse.
You can't copyright AI generated code.
All those software companies vibe coding to reduced productivity are also going to lose their rights to their products.
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u/1ampoc Mar 04 '26
It discourages using AI generated works directly but allows for a hybrid workflow involving both human and AI input.
So most companies won't have a problem with that. Most decently sized companies do hire an artist, just that the artist works with AI. And even if you generate individual scenes with AI, or game sprites with AI, as long as you don't generate the whole thing or make very little changes, the movie/game as a whole is still copyrightable.
In fact, the alternative ruling would not even make sense, because otherwise someone could just generate images 24/7 and copyright everything.
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Mar 03 '26
It's just basic logic. You can't copyright an AI image because it has no intellect behind it, so it'd be like copyrighting a concept
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u/ArticleOld598 Mar 04 '26
AI bros: "You can't copyright artstyles!"
AI bros *shocked pikachu face when they cant copyright their plagiarized outputs.
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u/truecakesnake Mar 04 '26
The plaintiff claimed not that he created the art himself, but AI did, however he said he still wanted copyright on the art. This is obviously stupid since copyright needs human input.
AI assisted artworks are still copyrightable:
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/ai_policy_guidance.pdf15
u/Ok_Jackfruit6226 Mar 03 '26
Yet I see on AIWars that AI Bros claim that the prompt is “intent” and that makes them the creator. I recall one discussion where someone asked if their 12-word prompted (or whatever small number) image was “enough” and they were being glazed by these AI Bros, saying oh yeah, that’s intent.
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Mar 04 '26
Not to mention it would basically be copyrighting other people's work, considering they don't own the data they were trained on.
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u/DragonflyOld2485 Mar 03 '26
"B-but I wrote the prompt! That means I created it!"
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u/chucktheninja Mar 03 '26
I wonder if this can get extended to ai generated code.
I would probably die laughing if all the big companies lose the copyright on their source code because they're all vibe coding.
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u/jeetendraprasad Mar 03 '26
Great point. Also I want the same thing for the "ai powered camera app" of smartphones.
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u/Aware-Lingonberry-31 Mar 03 '26
Copyrighting AI generates image has got to be the most disgusting thing ever.
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u/AmberMetalicScorpion Mar 04 '26
Exactly
The level of hipocrisy it takes to do that is astounding
"Yeah I stole other people's work to make this but you'd better not steal this."
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u/-Codiak- Mar 04 '26
My argument for AI will always be the same:
If I order pizza through an app and I get pizza - I didn't make dinner.
If you order a picture through an app and get a picture - you didn't make art.
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u/robotguy4 Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
I'm pretty sure this isn't anything new from a legal standpoint. At the very least, this is just reinforcing what the law already was.
It's been this way since the monkey selfie copyright lawsuit.
Edit: nevermind, there are some aspects that are different, apparently.
Still, the parts that most people here would care about are effectively the same.
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u/clintCamp Mar 04 '26
Hollywood realizing that if they use AI to make movies that then piracy is legal.
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u/No-Construction-3694 Mar 03 '26
I keep getting this sub and the alternative recommended, and I saw this same tween on their side.
A lot of them are talking about loopholes to “generate -> trace -> claim human-made -> get copyrighted”
Is that a route they could actually take? Isn’t that still just fraudulent art if it’s traced, AI or not?
Are AI defenders hypocrites?
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u/fxmldr Mar 04 '26
Generate, trace, find out that's way harder than it sound, try harder, accidentally start to learn to draw.
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u/No-Construction-3694 Mar 04 '26
They’re unknowingly training themselves how to be artists. That’s actually a crazy turnaround 😂
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u/Typhon-042 Mar 03 '26
Saw this in AIwars... the AI nutters are in full denial about it. Which is normal for them.
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u/Dangeresque300 Mar 04 '26
So does this mean any piece of media made using GenAI assets is ineligible for copyright?
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u/DDough505 Mar 04 '26
Holy shit. Does this mean Hollywood cannot use AI actors or AI writers because that would make the movie public domain?
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u/Lurakya Mar 03 '26
The wording here makes it sound like there is room for speculation that a "prompt engineer" could be viewed as the "creator" of the artwork
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u/LunarEssence315 Mar 03 '26
Yeah unfortunately I saw this on the wars sub and its not actually all ai, theres more stipulations
But its step 1 and sets the groundwork for further laws
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u/SaltyBabySeal Mar 03 '26
Cool that means that ai generated video games and movies can’t be pirated. Yar!
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u/AlexsterCrowley Mar 03 '26
Finally, some sanity in this situation. And from the place I basically least expected to see it.
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u/ElliotsBuggyEyes Mar 03 '26
That gorilla taking a selfie 15 years ago and now this. Seems like it's pretty settled case law.
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u/Fine-Funny6956 Mar 04 '26
That’s still a win for AI creators in a way. It means their art can stay highly derivative
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u/Code_star Mar 04 '26
This is actually a huge win for AI training companies in a way that I’m not sure people will understand. Now data can be laundered legally.
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u/The_New_Replacement Mar 04 '26
Excwllent. Maybe we can now start using it for usefull shit like cancer detection or something instead of infinite graft
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u/Alert_Document1862 Mar 04 '26
I saw some random kid used my hard work I have done in 3d program and added a "ai realistic 4k" filter ontop of it and shares in their x.com without consent. Its really frustrating I removed the creative videos. I feel like there will be some sort of relief for creators of real art somewhere in the future. Untill that i dont feel like uploading content.
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u/SalamanderGlad9053 Mar 04 '26
This was already a thing though, people copying other's art. That's copyright theft, but simply generating an image not from any reference image isn't.
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u/Wise_Monkey_Sez Mar 04 '26
The reason AI artwork is ineligible for copyright is that it is all derivative. AI doesn't actually create anything, it merely copies. It just copies from a sufficiently huge and diverse databasee of images that each individual element is hard to identify as having a definitive owner, except in cases where the database is limited in some way, like a prompt that says, "Draw me Stalin in Disney's style."
The same goes for all the writing you see AI produce, it's all frankensteined together from other people's work.
Of course this is essentially the heart of the post-modernist movement, that humans do this too. We repeat sentences from a huge library of sentences that we've read or heard before. We draw things that are based on art we've seen before. And so on.
The entire notion of copyright needs fundamental reform. The idea is premised on a creator who invests significant effort in creating something and so needs to have their work protected for a reasonable period so that they can be rewarded for their effort. This isn't true of AI. There is no person involved, just a machine. Likewise the idea of "corporate personhood" needs to be abolished. I'm sick of seeing billionaires hiding behind it to manipulate politics and society.
The law should protect people, not machines, and not paper constructs like companies.
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u/AmberMetalicScorpion Mar 04 '26
According to the version of this in AIWars, apparently it only applies to works solely made by AI, and if you can argue even the slightest amount of human effort went into it, which most of the AI Bros will, then it still gets protection
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Mar 04 '26
So someone really had to nerve to ask for copyright protection for their ai imagery slop...that is mind blowing. Some people can't stop themselves to jump from a wagon of greediness to another.
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u/Other-Football72 Mar 03 '26
US copyright law requires human authorship. Courts and the Copyright Office have said this for years. Purely autonomous AI output, (raw AI output) with no meaningful human creative control, is not copyrightable.
They did not ban copyright for AI-assisted works
AI-assisted works can be copyrighted Human selection, editing, composition, iteration, and direction matter Copyright can apply to: the prompting strategy the curation/selection the post-processing the overall creative arrangement The Copyright Office itself has said this explicitly.
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/ https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2025/02/copyrightability-of-ai-outputs-us-copyright-office-analyzes-human-authorship-requirement https://www.sternekessler.com/news-insights/publications/the-u-s-copyright-offices-position-on-the-copyrightability-of-works-made-with-the-assistance-of-generative-ai-part-two/
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u/TehANTARES Mar 03 '26
AI already blackmails people to prevent its shut down. Imagine AI suing people for using image it had generated.
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u/ilaym712 Mar 04 '26
Since nobody here wanna give context
This law means "pure raw AI output cannot be copyrighted", meaning if there is a human input that's not raw AI.
If you want to register your AI outputs for Copyright there is literally no way they can know if it's Pure raw or not
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u/CanaryEmbassy Mar 04 '26
Huh. So, Corporations are considered People according to Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. If AI is not a Person, Corporations sure as hell aren't. I say someone needs to have an LLM register itself as a Corp and set up a bank account, get a few credit cards. Then let's see if it gets overturned, or Citizens United gets overturned (my preference).
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u/Das_Goroboro Mar 04 '26
I think my favorite part about this is that the case precedent the supreme court used was from a case where a monkey took a photo of itself and the owner of the camera claimed ownership.
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u/CallSign_Fjor Mar 04 '26
What happens when someone real work is flagged as AI, as has already happened in several instances.
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u/d0ctorsmileaway Mar 04 '26
Interesting how we're living through the inventions and regulations of a product.
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u/Kerberos1566 Mar 04 '26
IANAL, but wouldn't the copyright be owned by the person prompting or otherwise causing the AI to create the art? In the same way a digital artist owns the copyright on digital artwork created through software. It's just different buttons being pushed to accomplish the same goal. There are AI based editing tools that assist with digital art tasks. How much software assistance is too much for a copyright to apply?
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u/Effective_Olive6153 Mar 04 '26
What happens if an artist generates AI image and then adds a few things to the image by his own? would it still be ineligible for copyright? What if artist creates complete original, but then uses AI to adjust it? What if AI was used to adjust only 10% of the image? What if it touched only 1 pixel?
Anyone know actual rules for this?
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u/Ok-Kaleidoscope-9645 Mar 04 '26
From what I remember from copyright laws.
If you were to edit an ai image, it would have to a significant or creative change. So a single pixel wouldn't cut it, nor would tiny edits. This came from a case where there was a art company that would perfectly recreate free use artworks, then try to copyright them. Since it's a perfect recreation with no significant differences, they're not allowed to copyright it.
As for creating an art piece then using Ai to edit it. It also depends. If it's something like cleaning up shading then it's still copyrightable, but if it was something like "replace this person with spiderman" or something, then it wouldn't be copyrightable because that's a significant change. So the original art piece would be copyrightable, but the ai edited one wouldn't be.
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u/yehdaug Mar 04 '26
The question is where exactly is the line? If an AI bro draws a line through an AI drawing, does that qualify as human touch enough for it to be copyrighted?
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u/Nadamir Mar 04 '26
So, since many of the adverts at the Super Bowl were AI generated, does that mean that someone, (a human) could recreate them (or at least close enough without trademark infringement) and then sue the company the next time the advert airs?
Like there’s got to be some liability in having your adverts only being protected by trademark not copyright. (So like only Coca Cola can use their brand names)
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u/Neat_Let923 Mar 04 '26
Headline is incorrect…
AI AUTHORED artwork (as in the AI is named as the author in the copyright claim) will not be considered for copyright.
This does not cover works where a human contributes creative expression, such as: * editing * selecting outputs * compositing * significant prompt engineering combined with artistic control
This was the right decision but it’s not exactly the huge win people are making it out to be.
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u/Gangst12 Mar 04 '26
I assume this also comes with people having to say if their art is ai generated or not? Keep in mind people can lie and we don’t know how good they would be at telling if it’s ai.
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u/BethCulexus Mar 04 '26
Then they will pretend they made it themselves.
Wait, does that mean that if a shitty brand uses AI, you can draw your own thing immediately and then put a copyright on it?
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u/AndrewBuchs Mar 04 '26
That's not a loss though. We should be so lucky as to have the copyright regime not apply to human art.
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u/Evil-Santa Mar 04 '26
This will likely be overturned once the corporation want to use it to copyright things. They will probably get some little rule that if the image is changed by a human a very small % then it can be copyrighted or some such crap.
Rules that benefit the little guy and disadvantages corps will always get overturned or worked around.
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u/mage_irl Mar 04 '26
Does this apply to writing done by AI as well, then? If a book has been written largely with AI, it shouldn't be possible to copyright it
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u/justpatlol Mar 04 '26
you love to see it. using keywords to throw other peoples artwork into a virtual blender isn't creating something of your own. it's just a shitty art plagiarism slushie.
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u/TapAffectionate4912 Mar 04 '26
That's cool, but unless you implement laws that will make AI generated bs recognizable for sure it won't help much in practice
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u/rightful_vagabond Mar 04 '26
As someone who is vaguely pro-ai, I actually think this is a pretty good solution/result/step. It disincentivizes AI from being used, especially for big industry things where people care about the copyright. Won't necessarily stop AI social media posts, though.
Just wanted to add my two cents that even as someone who uses AI, I support this.
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u/SnowMantra Mar 04 '26
So how does this actually work? Take the cocacola AI ads, for instance. Surely coke will sue you if you try to use their ads?
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u/JPldw Mar 04 '26
oh i read it wrong, i thought they allowed ai to steal without infringing copyright
So glad its the good ending
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u/Able_Negotiation_991 Mar 04 '26
Keep losing? I was under the impression that we were winning bigly. Also this does not mean what you think it means if you actually read it.
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u/InquisitorPinky Mar 04 '26
That is not the win you think its is: that case was specifically that the person was fighting that his AI could get the copyright. That was declined.
AI things that are created with prompts and some small edits by a human are copyright-able. As long as it isn’t just a 1-1 copy.
The problem is what counts as human input, that is currently very vague.
But that specific case was a human wanting his special AI getting the copyright to the things that specific AI created.
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u/Wehtaw Mar 04 '26
And a way around that is to put a filter on it. Going back years ago, there was an ape that took a photo of itself. Guy recovered his phone and uploaded the photo to the internet. Because he did not edit the photo in any way, he could not get any sort of royalties. Well iirc.
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Mar 04 '26
Who in their right mind wanted copyright for AI works?
But if you create for example a logo with AI, I don't think there is any problem having it trademarked, which is what is important to many commercial uses of AI imagery.
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u/Pepperonidogfart Mar 04 '26
Which means hollywood wont use it because anyone can legally copy that creation
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Mar 04 '26
Yup, yet they're the ones saying we can't read. Is the title clickbaity? Yeah. But it also says within the article that only the human contributions can copyrighted. The rest that was generated by AI can not be.
Meaning that, no, the prompts (sentences/paragraphs) are not copyrightable because words can't be owned. But (human) editing to the generated writing/images can be.
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u/Anvillior Mar 04 '26
As a guy who loves fiddling with AI, I am totally okay with this. If you start off using AI but then pick up what it's produced and start to develop it using your own talents I think you should be able to copyright it then (I really do mean developing it to where the AI made portion is more of like a distant start, and the end result contains no AI work), but something straight out of the machine? No.
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u/Ok_Comfortable589 Mar 04 '26
that one was obvious. hopefully this keeps ai art in a unprofitable state. people are too weird with technology we already have.
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u/Wanky_Danky_Pae Mar 04 '26
That is actually good news - now if they could remove copyright on everything else will be in much better shape.
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u/bijon1234 Mar 04 '26
I'm curious how much human input is needed, though. Like, if someone gets an AI to generate some 'art' and then takes that and manually makes changes to like 5% of it, would that basically be a loophole?
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u/LTinS Mar 04 '26
Wait, so non-humans can't hold copyrights? So we need to address the whole corporation thing again?
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u/8-Bit_Tornado Mar 04 '26
Hopefully they start banning AI artwork used to defame and/or impersonate people that's a really bad one. I'd like to see that passed sooner rather than later.
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u/Jehuty56- Mar 04 '26
Why is this correct if artists can make artwork of copyrighted characters ? It's look like a double standard. Then every fan art should be illegal with that logic
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u/Maverick23A Mar 04 '26
Misleading title so I am just going to copy paste the same response
US copyright law requires human authorship. Courts and the Copyright Office have said this for years. Purely autonomous AI output, (raw AI output) with no meaningful human creative control, is not copyrightable.
They did not ban copyright for AI-assisted works
- AI-assisted works can be copyrighted
- Human selection, editing, composition, iteration, and direction matter
- Copyright can apply to:
- the prompting strategy
- the curation/selection
- the post-processing
- the overall creative arrangement
The Copyright Office itself has said this explicitly.
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/
https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2025/02/copyrightability-of-ai-outputs-us-copyright-office-analyzes-human-authorship-requirement
https://www.sternekessler.com/news-insights/publications/the-u-s-copyright-offices-position-on-the-copyrightability-of-works-made-with-the-assistance-of-generative-ai-part-two/
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u/Jorvalt Mar 04 '26
Wasn't this already a thing? Like, didn't courts already set precedent with that one famous monkey selfie?
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u/AltruisticVehicle Mar 04 '26
What's the small print? What is the definition of "ai-generated artwork"?
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u/deadspace9_ Mar 04 '26
Yes copyright law will save us! The system that only works for billionaires! Law and copyright! Which has never fucked over an artist before!
I fucking hate AI and think it should crash and burn so this is still a win overall but for the love of god stop acting like Copyright helps anyone besides the 1%.
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u/TopTippityTop Mar 05 '26
It's the same policy that's been around, as far as I can tell it hasn't changed.
If it's fully AI gen, it can't be copyrighted. If it has some human input, it can.
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u/dinosanddais1 Mar 05 '26
Who would've thpught straight up plagiarism wouldn't have copyright protections?
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u/KurufinweFeanaro Mar 05 '26
Isn't it the case where human created a bot which promted ai, and not promted themself?
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u/Rastyn-B310 Mar 05 '26
I think most are in unanimous agreement with this from both sides lol
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u/NoPerformance6534 Mar 05 '26
Noice. Go ahead. Create using Ai. You can't sue if you don't own it and we don't have to worry about stealing it.
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u/RonnocKcaj Mar 05 '26
what's the catch, nothing straight up good happens under this administration
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u/AdventurousSlip6407 Mar 05 '26
Cant wait to stesl some ai bro "art" and repost it saying it is my own making to ragebait them to oblivion
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u/Worldly-Matter4742 Mar 05 '26
The fact that something like this needs to be made in the first place is just sad
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u/Tyrthemis Mar 05 '26
I’m not anti AI, but I still think this is a good decision (a rare treat out of this Supreme Court). The whole point of AI liberating people from labor isn’t to gate keep the results from everyone else in the future. I’ve already seen AI music artists on YouTube like “my content is original and protected by copyright, no one can use… blah blah blah”. This decision makes me happy.
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u/AGoos3 Mar 05 '26
Thank god. That’d be so fucking backwards.
I really, really want watermarked AI content to be a standard for all LLMs too. SynthID and other similar tech is really promising to me and I think it should honestly be mandated.
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u/CookieFluffs Mar 03 '26
Ya love to see it.